carefully executed maneuvers (bendytimed before clone plot) [closed]

[encourage]

Time was difficult enough to figure out on ship when she was having a good day. The mild hangover she'd had this morning (drinking water and forcing herself to down slop from the mess hall had kept it mild) had morphed into a milder headache and light sensitivity that had mostly faded by the time she'd picked up her omnicomm and run across Lash proposing some kind of celebration.

It was in the sensoriums, which was anything but good in Sakura's general opnion, but as she stared down at her omnicomm yet again, she had wondered if it would be a decent distraction to keep her mind off the stupidities of last night and early in the morning. If nothing else, given that she wasn't expected in MedBay today, it would fill in some time before she heard back from Marco. So she'd gone. What was there to lose?

It was only later, after she'd excused herself from the sensoriums and everyone within them, that she realized why she probably hadn't heard from monkey boy. Staring at the desk in her room, she looked between the omnicomm she'd just set down and the one that was on top of a book.

The slow realization that the omnicomm she'd thought had fallen out of her pouch last night hadn't fallen anywhere. She hadn't had her omnicomm with her. She'd walked off with someone else's omnicomm from where Marco lived. With her luck, it was probably Marco's omnicomm.

Sakura shouldered her satchel once more and raced down the stairs. If anyone was around to see her, she probably looked amusingly out of sorts, still dressed for the beach and heading back out within minutes of finally getting home. It didn't take long to make her way over to his residence, relying on shinobi speed to cut down on travel time. She came to a stop at the front door, running her hand through her hair to get it to calm down before she knocked. Best to get this started. By now, she owed a few apologies.

I am never drinking again.

Comments

[livestoannoy]

"How come your apology involves me taking my clothes off?" Marco said, following her up the rock.

And oh man, he was seriously wet. He shook his head a bit to try and dislodge at least some of the water, and moved over to the nearest patch of grass to plonk down on it. After a moment's pause, he pulled off sopping wet hoodie, then peeled off his t-shirt, tossing them on top of a nearby bush.

[encourage]

"Because I'll make the appropriate girlish remarks when you're topless." She cleared her throat. "Oh, Marco! You're so... shirtless!"

Sakura hiked up an eyebrow as he casually tossed his clothing at a bush. The poor thing bent to breaking under the weight of all that waterlogged cotton. With a sigh, she plucked his sweatshirt out of the bush and started wringing it out over the rocks. No point in getting her feet any more dirty than they already were. "Nice. Why so many layers, anyway? Are you actually cold around here?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco laughed, amused at her attempts at 'girlish'. "I think your girlish remarks need work," he said, grinning.

"Barbie, it's only two layers. It's not like I'm wondering around in a ski jumper," he said, rolling his eyes. "And I just felt like wearing it. Not like it matters either way, with Stacy's temperature."

[encourage]

Aah, he must be feeling better. He was laughing and speaking his-world nonsense. "Do I need to simper more? I haven't done that for years. Or would fluttering my eyelashes while saying that help?" She paused in her wringing to look back over her shoulder, fluttering her lashes. "Marco, you're... shirtless!"

[livestoannoy]

At that Marco snorted, practically shaking with laughter now. In fact it was a few moments before the laughter decided to die down - and at that point, it occurred to Marco that Sakura might get really annoyed at the fact that she was currently the only one wringing out his clothes. And well, she'd already gotten pissed off enough times today. One more time just might be pushing his luck - so he reached over to grab his t-shirt and start wringing that out.

[encourage]

Right about as Sakura had finished wreaking vengeance on his hoodie, ducking down to leave it spread over a rock not covered in water. The plant had suffered enough so far. She glanced up when Marco started helping. That prompted a smile out of her, different from the amused one a while earlier. She'd been helping in the first place because she was in some (large) part responsible for trying to get him to become a human sponge. It was good seeing him suck it up and help himself.

"Don't tell me this was secretly laundry day," she said as she stood up. Teasing again, since it obviously hadn't been. She hadn't left him with a choice.

Which really, was to what end? She looked back to the bridge, her neat collection of clothing and her sandals sitting undisturbed. Letting her eyes wander over the area, she ended up looking at the simulated clouds. Almost looked like rain, outside of the fact any pretense of weather was fairly rare. "What's it like, seeing this place from up there?"

[livestoannoy]

"Nah, I've got stuff back home," Marco said, shrugging. "And it's not like we don't still have the plantsuits. Although those things are freaky. I do not need to have clothes that are alive, man." Which was another reason to be glad that they'd figured out how to morph more than skintight clothing - he didn't have to bother keeping it on under his other clothes for when he needed to morph.

He looked up, following her line of sight. Turning back to look at Sakura, Marco gave her a wry smile. "It's pretty cool. Flying is awesome. Like - you take whatever you guys think is the most exhilarating thing you could ever do. Compared to flying, that's nothing. And with hawk eyes you can see anything. If I were in osprey morph, and flying all the way up there?" he nodded up at the sky. "I could spot the ants crawling around on the ground. Individual ants. And then I could count their legs."

[encourage]

"Be glad you're male," is all Sakura had to say on the issue of plantsuits. She didn't bother explaining why. It was on a very don't think about it basis.

"Mmm," she said, watching the sky. "It's why we use hawks as messenger birds. Scouts, too, though that requires a Yamanaka to be riding with them, if it's not a summons." Summons could be big enough to carry a person, or reported directly back all that they'd seen. Yamanaka's could jump consciousness on various animals, riding and directing to some degree. Sakura didn't know the specifics. Ino did, which was a given -- the Yamanaka was her Clan.

"Very little escapes their attention. Apparently not even the number of legs on an ant," she said, nodding to Marco. It was impressive, really! More so that one person had direct access to a variety of useful skills, in a more direct way than any of the shinobi. "When Konoha's looking for you, it's one of the many reasons it's very hard to stay un-found."

[livestoannoy]

Marco frowned for a moment, wondering what the hell she could be talking about - before deciding that no, he probably did not want to know.

"Hawks as messenger birds?" he said, dubious. "How the hell do you train hawks to be messenger birds? They're not like pigeons - they won't just fly back to the same point all the time. And that doesn't even begin to explain how you can have someone riding with what. What, do they have some super ninja secret shrinking ability or something?"

[encourage]

"The way you train any animal, really. Hawks are our most reliable messengers for long distance. They also expect to be well fed whenever they arrive."

She laughed at the idea of a shrinking ability. "No, nothing like that, if one of the Clans in Konoha has a growth technique. The Yamanaka..." she trailed off with a frown. He probably wasn't going to like this. "They have a mind jutsu. They can ride along with someone or something in some applications, or take control of another person's body in others. They're limited by their own acting skills," she said, lifting her shoulders into a slight shrug, "If that's more important when it comes to dealing with people than animals. Let instincts ride, so I hear, and don't make it too obvious what you're observing."

[livestoannoy]

"Wait, that makes even less sense. Hawks aren't good long distance fliers. They're build for gliding, not endless flapping, and unless you've got a lot of decent thermals around they just wont have the energy to keep flying that hard. What kind of weird bird do you have in your world?!"

And she was right - Marco definitely didn't like the sound of the Yamanaka. "Excuse me? They control people?" he said, reeling back.

[encourage]

"My bet would be thermals. They're not big flappers, not from anything I remember. Hey, don't ask me to make it make sense to you. I took care of the birds from time to time, I had nothing to do with training or logic behind what they do."

Her frown stayed in place. "I told you there was more than one way. It's not permanent. It can't be," she explained, feeling a little guilty that she was willing to talk about Ino's Clan technique at all. No cost to her, right? If his reaction was a little gratifying. "They're literally planting their consciousness in another body for a while. Their body's left behind, without a conscious mind to guide it. Do you get it? It's as good as having someone black out on you. Their technique's unusable without people there to back them up and guard their body until they come back."

[livestoannoy]

"I don't care if they're blacked out. I wouldn't want anyone controlling my body. Not ever," he said flatly. It was enough to make his skin crawl. If it it wasn't as total as a Yeerk's control, even if it made them vulnerable, even the host wasn't aware. The idea still terrified him.

[encourage]

"It's not absolute. You can fight them off, forcing them back into their own body." She didn't add that this was why the technique was best for short periods of time, often in having a "teammate" turn on the rest of their team, killing while manipulating that element of surprise.

No reason to make him especially paranoid. "The Clans all have individual techniques that define them," she continued conversationally. "The Clans as a whole are older than any of our current nations."

[livestoannoy]

"And that's supposed to...what? Make me feel better?" he wring the t-shirt tightly, his knuckles turning white as he practically tried to squeeze it to death. "Look, can we just...not talk about how you guys regularly use mind control as a battle technique?"

He might have appreciated into information about clans another time. Now, thinking about how there was apparently a whole clan dedicated to controlling people, it just made him feel sick.

[encourage]

Welcome to her world. She eyed him out of the corner of her eyes, then let the topic drop. She wondered if she would ever mention Katsuyu to him. Probably not.

"Nice weather we're having," she said straightfaced.

[livestoannoy]

Marco sent her a dirty look. "Ha ha," he said, with a roll of the eyes. "Next time, I vote that we go play video games instead of spending all our time going on about all this depressing stuff."

[encourage]

"As payback for pulling you in the water? You're cruel. At least you've been swimming before." She crossed her arms, looking back over to her clothing. She was drying, little by little. "Though if we skip the video part and just go for electronic games, like Simon Says..." she trailed off. Howard had introduced her to that one, and even if he'd pretty much kicked her ass at it, Sakura had been practicing during calm hours in MedBay.

She could probably kick ass at Simon Says. Her realization for what either of them had been saying hit a second too late. "Next time?"

[livestoannoy]

"Simon Says?" Marco said, incredulous. "That's not a video game! Not to mention that compared to real video games, it's boring." Okay, he definitely had to introduce her to video games somehow. Because he could not let her go on thinking that Simon Says of all things was one.

"Uh," Marco said, only just realising himself what he'd actually said. "If you want a next time?"

[encourage]

She was proud of her ability to mimic flashing lights, Marco! It was downright rude to take that away from her. "I didn't say it was a video game," she said. "Hence dropping the video part of video game."

She didn't know. For one, this hadn't been anything close to what she expected a date to be like -- even if her idea was pretty much limited to walking and eating together at the restaurants they largely didn't have. More-over, she hadn't been exaggerating when she'd told Kang she found Marco annoying. He was annoying. He went out of his way to be annoying.

But saying yes to shut him up had been different than she'd even led Kang to believe. Sakura didn't like being forced into corners anymore than the next person, and damned if you do damned if you don't situations were particularly vexing.

Then there was the fact this had been more like an extended arguing session tied in with a little companionship than anything else. She doubted tossing in a competitive game would change that much. Did she want to make a bid for someone else's version of normalcy? That's all dates really were. On Earth, that apparently stood in as pre-arranged time to meet with a friend. That'd be fine, wouldn't it?

"What kind of video games are we talking about?" she said at last.

[livestoannoy]

Well, this hadn't been anything close to what Marco had expected a date to be like either. So hey, at least in that regard they were pretty much even.

And you'd always had the option to say no, Sakura.

"You know, basic action games, strategy, rpgs. Depends what you like," he said, shrugging. And hoping that she'll actually go for it.

[encourage]

"Arpegees?" His clarifications didn't actually clarify anything, if she realized part of that was asking the wrong kind of question. "So you're telling me that what they're like depends on an opinion I don't have because I've never played any."

She sent him a look. A look that said, You know that sounds stupid, right? "And to know what I like I then probably have to play some of these games." She paused. "Where does Trivial Pursuit fall in all of that?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco grinned. "Don't knock it till you've tried it," he said cheekily. "And seriously, Trivial Persuit? That's not a video game either, that's a board game. And also less fun."

[encourage]

"You play it on a video screen! That's close enough for me," she said, crossing her arms. "Have you even played Trivial Pursuit?"

[livestoannoy]

"Not normally you don't," Marco said, rolling his eyes. "And yes, I've played Trivial Pursuit. Everyone's played Trivial Pursuit. It's like the standard board game, along with Monopoly and Scrabble.